Andrew Hill: Seven

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Artist

CD

This is a solo piece composed by Russell Baba. I saw Andrew play with Russell at the San Francisco Asian American Jazz Festival, maybe a couple of years before this was recorded. He had a longstanding relationship with Russell from the Ď70s. This is a straight solo record that Andrew did in the late Ď90s, after not having released much that whole decade. Itís a live record at a small club in France. On this song, he gets a powerful resonance out of the instrument, great clouds of sound. Iíve always cherished Andrewís sound. He gets the instrument ringing in a way that reminds me of Monk, Duke Ellington, McCoy Tyner, and...well, not many other people. You can tell that he cherishes that physical sensation that the piano gives you when you get it really ringing and shaking. You just feel it. It starts to play you. Andrew was able to cut through a rhythm section and still get that depth of sound with that kind of technique, and it often means he plays a little less than, for example, Tommy Flanagan, who was also a percussive player but fleet and delicate as well. Just a different perspective. Here itís really about physics and getting the whole room resonating. Thereís something very majestic and almost sacred about it.